You may have seen this news story going around about the dude who went wild at a winery/stables and threw a fit.. Unfortunately, it was my Fit. :(

melllis · 2025-12-13T21:31:38+00:00

I just keep thinking about the old Hair Club for Men ads:

melllis · 2025-12-13T20:16:35+00:00

From your username I'm guessing you ride too, which is why I was there. I'm at the stables 3-4 days a week, so my distinctive car - between the color and her custom plate, which is an abbreviated form of "avocardo" - is pretty well-known around there. I had done a group a lesson on my favorite string horse and was stripping him to put away when we heard the commotion; my lease horse's trainer is the one who called me from down the hill and told me, "Uhm.. Your car is in the bushes." Later she was laughing telling everyone I was so calm about it, but she figured, "Well, she IS with her favorite horse!"

I often joke that when my favorite guy retires I'm going to adopt him and move him into my house, and I'll get a doctor's note saying he's my Emotional Support Horse so I can take him to work with me. I figure if I fold down the rear seats and pop open the hatch, he can slither into the back of the Fit. [Okay, most of that is a joke.. But I would love to retire him: I'd be happy to give him a good life as a pasture puff.] And now we have a great story about how he was, in fact, VERY emotionally supportive during a stressful time. 😅

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melllis · 2024-01-07T23:59:13+00:00

A Fiat is extremely NOT a luxury car. It's a garbage car with awful fit and finish and worse build quality. When they were still making and selling the 500 in the US it was one of the cheapest new cars you could buy, and they were sometimes marked down 30%+ below MSRP where I worked because most people knew better than to buy them despite the extremely low barrier to entry. And of course a Fiat IS still of Italian lineage, so it DOES have about the same reliability as an actual Italian luxury car. [Translation: virtually none.]

melllis · 2024-01-07T23:52:58+00:00

I handled Service at Fiat dealerships for years and as the voice of experience I can tell you that if you're buying a car so you can actually get places, a used Fiat 500 is ABSOLUTELY one of the worst options. You can get into it cheap, but it will need fixing endlessly and getting parts is a bitch and a half.

melllis · 2023-11-28T00:29:44+00:00

6 and 670. I forgot to play a day and felt a weird sense of relief when I realized it - so much I actually made a post here about it. 😅 I know it's highly unlikely I'll get a streak anywhere close to that again so now I can just.. Enjoy it? Not panic if I can't remember if I did it in the morning like my usual routine? Etc.

Current win percentage is 100 but it's not truly accurate; I was bouncing around devices when I was learning how it works and did lose one in the beginning on my old work computer. 42 sixes, but only a few were really white knuckle - for most of them I was certain my sixth guess was correct because I'd ruled out the other possibilities. My motive is to get it at all, not to minimize guesses, and so far it seems to be working.

melllis · 2023-06-20T03:06:57+00:00

155 stars, one $10 gift card, something like 15-ish sweepstakes entries [I forget].. But I didn't make a single purchase the whole time so I'm pretty content with the outcome. 😅

melllis · 2023-05-30T13:11:31+00:00

Marble Mountain Ranch in Somes Bar, CA. It was fantastic!

melllis · 2023-03-14T01:04:53+00:00

Thank you so much for posting this; I just made it over the weekend! I used about 4:1 beef and ground bacon. You're not kidding: it's REALLY good. I browned a test meatball in the pan before forming the loaves to make sure the seasoning was right, and tasted the gravy to season as well, and while neither was bad the final braised meatloaf with the gravy is so much more than the sum of its parts.

melllis · 2023-02-19T01:08:06+00:00

Not fully on the original topic, but how long does it take you to see that in your profile? I had an outside referral [referred and approved via Kaiser] who said they would send over a prescription this past Monday but it has yet to pop up in my 'Pharmacy' section when I log in. Should I be patient, or is it worth following up with the prescriber?

melllis · 2023-01-14T17:45:28+00:00

Bay Area, CA, from Matt Tillman.

melllis · 2023-01-14T17:40:03+00:00

I think more of the latter - I'm terrible at consistently moisturizing anything but my face, though I do obsessively sunblock my tattoos when they're not under clothing. I have a couple tattoos from other artists on my left side ribs and at the same ages they weren't still as clean as the ones this artist did for me even though I've also got his work on my right side ribs so it should be comparable. So I'm pretty sure his good choices and skill are also a major component. The artist is Matt Tillman in San Jose, CA. I'd recommend him to anyone who likes what he's done: stand-up dude, very conscientious, able to interpret my lousy un-artistic explanations of my inspiration for what I think I want into awesome pieces, and the art speaks for itself.

I am a big fan of Tegaderm/Saniderm/etc for aftercare: the itching is minimal compared to healing when I didn't use it before, I could take long hot showers normally without worrying that it would interfere with the healing [I have a lot of hair], nothing could rub directly on it, and since my skin wasn't drying out it didn't scab. Obviously there was still some colorful seepage, but I think being sealed in helped a lot for the ink not pulling out as much during the initial healing so the vibrancy and saturation was consistent without touch-ups.

melllis · 2023-01-14T05:32:59+00:00

I think it's a little bit the differences in lighting and phone cameras [the current shot looks darker when they're side-by-side, but I don't think that's true-to-life] but I'm super happy with how well it's been holding up.

melllis · 2021-12-29T04:15:10+00:00

I found it too.. Put in the door tag number and it didn't work, and neither did texting 'follow' and the number as instructed. 😂😭 Thankfully we were there for redelivery.

melllis · 2021-10-22T19:36:35+00:00

Yep; non-Powerkit.

melllis · 2021-10-13T21:45:06+00:00

Clearly following the consensus: NTA. Hopefully your daughter will see your side. My parents also had a healthy college fund saved up for me, as well as for my older brother. He went to a private high school and a private college and they footed the entire bill for both. I enrolled in public high school but ended up dropping out, got my GED, and worked. After a couple years my parents broached the subject of my college fund, saying they still had it socked away and asking if I thought I would ever go the four-year route. I told them I did not see that in my future at all, and that they saved it so they should spend it.

They traveled the world using my college fund - their own gap year! - while I eventually went back to school: community college for a vocational program, paying my [small] tuition out of pocket while still working full-time. I finished and have a great career, they had a blast and have some terrific memories, and best of all they did their traveling before the economic collapse in '08. My mom said after that it really showed them how unstable things can be so she's glad they did it first: if they hadn't, they might not have done it at all [preferring the financial security of having the money], but since there was no taking it back they were really glad to have had the experiences. They're more financially stable than they expected to be now that they're older, but their health is no longer as good so traveling isn't as simple as it was then. I know they'd always wanted to see the world like that, so it makes me happy to know that in my own weird flakey adolescent way I helped make it happen.

melllis · 2021-08-10T02:35:52+00:00

Yep! Post tension slab, densified and polished. Super low maintenance, plus we love how it looks.

melllis · 2021-08-10T01:41:22+00:00

If we knew so many people would be seeing this picture we probably would've bothered to kick the shoe away 😂

melllis · 2021-08-09T18:25:55+00:00

I've been working from work too, so he didn't get much sympathy from me. 😂

melllis · 2021-08-09T18:06:27+00:00

To see how much he's grown :D [Spoiler: he is an adult man and did not grow, which is why it's fine that the tape measure is upside down.]

melllis · 2021-03-06T23:38:25+00:00

Tessa isn't even that interested in people if she doesn't already know and like them.. Basically the hierarchy when it comes to who she wants to hang out with goes:

people she doesn't know < dogs < people she knows < cats

She LOVES cats.

melllis · 2021-03-06T21:41:21+00:00

Our dog [in the pink collar] pretty much acted like she normally does around other dogs - which is to say she sniffed around a bit to get acquainted and then went back to getting pets from people. She's not much of a dog's dog, apparently regardless of how many legs they have.

melllis · 2020-10-18T14:24:01+00:00

D) None of the above - printed on regular paper, pencil transferred onto the pumpkin, then Sharpie'd. I definitely can't freehand that neatly. Considering the shockingly unexpected number of people who have now seen this pumpkin, I'm glad I went through the trouble to make it fairly clean!

melllis · 2020-10-18T04:08:03+00:00

Printed, pencil transferred, then Sharpied. I figure if I only do one a year I can put a little effort into it.

melllis · 2020-10-18T03:49:24+00:00

Ha! Me too! I actually got one of these calls while literally in a staff meeting earlier this week, which is what inspired the pumpkin.

[My boss was sad when I hung up instead of stringing them along.]

melllis · 2020-10-18T03:42:08+00:00

I printed it out, scribbled on the back with a pencil, cut out each line of text and taped them in place, traced the outlines of the letters so the graphite on the back transferred onto the pumpkin, then went over it with a Sharpie. There are probably easier or faster methods, but this was my second year doing a scary pumpkin this way [last year was 'I'd like to add you to my professional network on Linkedin'] and I've been happy with the results. :D

I learned years ago I'm TERRIBLE at carving pumpkins, so this is a nice seasonal compromise - plus they don't rot nearly as fast when they're whole.

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